As Croatia prepares for a referendum on becoming the European Union's 28th
nation, the Brussels club is no longer as tempting as it once was, reports
Colin Freeman

Its currency may be in crisis and its leaders at each other's throats, but Ronald Braus, a Croatian opera baritone, is still keen to sing a song for Europe.

After years of struggling to find enough work in his native land, the 38-year-old intends to lend his voice to the enthusiastic "yes" chorus in next weekend's referendum on whetherCroatia should join the European Union.

Out, he hopes, will go the lengthy work visa hassles and queues in the "other passports" section at European airports, and in will come the chance to ply his talents in the opera houses of Rome, Vienna and Covent Garden.

"I will vote 'Yes' because Croatia is going nowhere, and it is better to be with Italy and Germany than with Bosnia and Serbia," smiled Mr Braus, sipping a coffee in an elegant Habsburg-era district of Zagreb, the Croatian capital.

"Sure, we may lose a little independence, but we will also lose a lot of problems. And as for the eurozone crisis – Croatia has been in crisis since I was born anyway."

Opinion polls predict a "Yes" vote of up to 60 per cent on Sunday, paving the way for Croatia to become the first of the ex-combatants from the Balkans wars of the 1990s to join the Euro-club. That fact alone is a matter of satisfaction to some, pleased that their immediate neighbour and former enemy Serbia has yet to be officially accepted even as an official candidate for EU membership. Montenegro, Macedonia and Iceland are ahead of Serbia in the queue.

However, while the poll is being seen by Brussels as a much-needed vote of confidence in the EU's long-term viability, not everyone is in the mood for singing Beethoven's Ode to Joy, the official European Union anthem that has accompanied the referendum campaign.

One concern among Croatia's 4.5 million people is that after two decades of rebuilding their war-shattered economy, they will inevitably get sucked into the eurozone's financial problems, possibly having to help bail out southern neighbours like Italy or Greece.

But fears about handing over hard-earned cash are accompanied by fears about surrendering hard-earned freedom. The independence they have enjoyed since fighting their separatist war from the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s is their first in nearly 1,000 years, during which time they have been variously threatened by the Ottomans, ruled by the Habsburgs, and run as a puppet state by the Nazis.

To some, the ever-more centralised European superstate as just another encroaching empire.

"I don't want to go into Europe," said Ivana Kasum, 28, who works in Zagreb's famous Croata tie shop, a garment that Croatia claims to have brought to the rest of the world in the 17th century. "Living standards are bad enough here already, and they would only get worse. We came out of Yugoslavia to be independent, and it is stupid to go straight into a union of some other kind."

Nestling between the fertile plains of the Danube and the scenic, island-speckled coast of the Adriatic, Croatia has long seen itself as more Western-looking than its Balkan neighbours, and more victim than perpetrator in the Yugoslav civil war.

Since formally applying to join the EU in 2005, it has passed thousands of laws, by-laws and reforms to satisfy EU bureaucrats that it is fit for membership, and has also reluctantly handed over two former generals to the Hague war crimes tribunal, despite them being seen at home as heroes who merely defended Croat turf.

Yet thanks to the EU's current woes, many are now asking if they should cancel, or at least postpone, what was seen as a dream goal at the end of that war. Blessed with beaches, lakes, and forests that are a magnet to tourists, and an abundance of prime farmland, they wonder if Croatia could not be like Switzerland or Norway, enjoying trade benefits with the EU without the commitments of full membership.

No, insists Croatia's political class, which has little time for such arguments. The EU bid has the support of both the ruling Social Democrat Party and opposition Croatian Union of Democrats, who lost power last month after their prime minister, Ivo Sanader, went on trial on corruption charges. A "No" vote now, they argue, would not just keep Croatia in a post-Yugoslav political wilderness, but deprive it of €1.6 billion in EU funding over the next three years alone, as well as vast new markets for Croatian firms.

"It's true, when we started negotiating for membership, Europe seemed to us like marrying a beautiful girl with a large dowry, and now perceptions are completely different," admits Tonino Picula, a foreign minister during a previous SDP stint in power. "Eurocritics say it is possible to be happy outside the EU, but the fact is we are not really like Switzerland or Norway. Membership of the EU is the best possible life insurance for a small country today, and if we expect help from the EU ourselves, it is only fair that we should help out other nations in times of problems."

Andrej Plenkovic, secretary of state for European affairs with the outgoing government, adds that the earliest Croatia would join the eurozone itself would be 2016, which gives "ample" time to sort things out. "There is no immediate fear that we would have to contribute to the bail-out."

Critics, though, say the cross-party consensus has meant little real scrutiny of the issues in the run-up to the vote, despite around 30 per cent of the public being against membership with 10 per cent as yet undecided. The EU "information centre" in Zagreb, for example, touts little more than propaganda videos showing grateful citizens from newly-joined EU countries saying how much they are "loving it". A 2010 booklet titled "A Snapshot of EU Achievements", meanwhile, makes the somewhat bold claim that "rapid EU action preserved the stability and credibility of the euro".

Instead, the lone parliamentary voice questioning the EU accession is that of Ruza Tomasic, a 53-year-old ex-policewoman who spent her early career in Canada before returning to Croatia in 1990, helping guard President Franjo Tudjman from assassination plots during the war years. She is used to speaking her mind - she received death threats from the Croatian mafia after helping get a heroin dealer jailed on Korcula, the picturesque island on Croatia's Dalmatian coast where she lives, and to this day still keeps a pistol for protection.

"We fear Croatia will get sucked into the eurozone crisis, and end up having to help other countries that we are actually poorer than," she told The Sunday Telegraph over tea flavoured with lemons from her garden.

"I am not against joining the EU as such, but my problem is that there hasn't been any real debate about it here, and many people don't really know what they are getting into.

"Our leaders have just rolled over because they want to be part of this big club that will give them lots of extra funds. We should at least postpone until we know whether the eurozone is going to fall apart."

As things stand, however, Mrs Tomasic remains a minority voice, cheerfully dismissed by the likes of Mr Plenkovic, who says that with "two hours argument, I think I could change her mind".

Yet if Croatia does decide in favour of becoming the EU's 28th nation on Sunday, there will be many who do so not so much for love - as the EU propaganda videos might claim - as for money.

A short drive down the pine-tree lined road from Mrs Tomasic's house is the Karlovacko café, which has a large portrait of Croat general Ante Gotovina, currently serving 24 years in the Hague for alleged war crimes. When the EU, led by Britain, made his capture a condition for accession talks to begin in 2005, many Croats said they would prefer to remain outside. In these hard times, though, some of those locals who still regard him as a heroji are having to be pragmatic.

"I'd be against joining the European Union, really, but I'm in the hotel business, so the more tourists we get, the better," said Zarko Pecotic, stirring a coffee on the café's veranda. "I can't afford to object."